1a - Oviparous Rex
by teddybowties
Summary: the Eleventh Doctor has guilt-tripped himself into a jar of extra spicy kimchee by agreeing to use his body as a growth and incubation receptacle for the eggs of a dying race. Only, we know that man can't survive a trip to the store! O.o sequel 2 TQC. MPREG.
1. prologue

Prologue

Another macro-ovum teases, shoving apart the lips of my abused nethers. But I pass the egg, feeling like a mother octopus half-frozen in a glacier twenty kilometers above sea level, wishing she could see the food and babies swimming about below.

As I dig my hands nails and all against the glass of the console floor, I know the light is leaping away from me, in little ellipse-shaped bounds again. As well it should. I've been laying someone else's eggs all day.

After collapsing in the hallway, I am on my side, having long since resigned myself to the inevitability of misery. Adrift in a haze of birth and rest and birth and rest and birth, I await my eventual lapse into the temporary bliss of sleep. Whatever possessed me to agree to carry an entire race's hopes and dreams in my apparently not quite so vestigial womb in the form of a multitude of eggs? I mean really, what was I thinking? I can only lay one at a time, and as soon as I have, another begins to grow. There are millions of them, still. I won't be done for days…

There are countless piles of the things in the console room alone, already.

My vital fluids will run out before then. I'll be sucked dry by the constant need to lay these eggs, the poor things. But it's not their fault. They need electrolytes to grow, coming from a sodium-rich ocean planet as they do. As they did, rather. Their planet is gone. I'll find them a new one. Damn it.

Oh well. As I write this, I imagine the TARDIS is calling Jack. I can hear the chime of buttons that sing out his cell phone number.

I can't remember? Did I set him up with universal roaming when he was here last?

I do hope he hurries… my skin is dry and I'm becoming salt deficient. The proper growing of these eggs inside me requires salty fluids, and my own electrolytes are nearly depleted to levels which would render me comatose. Soon, there won't be anyone home when they…

Oh, there's that banging again? And the lights are dimming… wait those are my eyelids.


	2. ch 01

Chapter One

Words fill the window of Jack Harkness' cell phone. Words sent from THAT number. But they don't sound like the usual sender…

THIEFSEXYCHILDRENSALTDEATHFLUIDS.

He needs to clear it out in case of more messages, but he won't. Because he can't. The blue box is standing there naked in front of him. Mickey is with him. Martha is with Mickey.

Their faces are a triangle of shared purpose as they stare at each other.

"What the hell?" says Mickey as he runs up to the phone box –shaped ship. "Since when did the TARDIS have stealth mode?"

"The text said something about dying, Mickey, I don't think it was him." Jack murmurs as he touches the blue double doors. "I think it was Her." He turns to the doors again. "Let us in, Sweetheart. Show us where he is."

The doors shift open, outward onto their waiting faces, revealing the promise of dimly lit gold as light issues forth from the console room.

Jack tosses the phone to Martha and pulls the doors completely out the way. He can't wait. And who could? Somebody was dying, and the Doctor was involved. Somehow.

"Personally… I'd rather be dancing…" gasps an unfamiliar voice from somewhere; doubtless the TARDIS is piping him in from wherever he's at inside her.

"Find me, Jack! Don't… let me… fall asleep! The rest… of them… will die unless… I keep this up, but I… I haven't… haven't anything left… need… I need…I… need…"

"Salt." Jack says softly, looking up in the general direction of the comms hidden in the TARDIS' walls. "The eggs we saw, they must need electrolytes… which means he is dangerously close to catatonia." He turns to Martha, his eyes lit with the ancient fires of fear. "Saline! Do you have any in your kit?"

Martha slides to an alcove with her medical kit bag and attacks the catch, tossing the metal clasp to the pale glass floor as she clicks open the bag.

"I ain't believin' all these eggs, Doctor!" Mickey yells to the hidden comm as Martha hands him the bag of saline from her kit then packs the kit back up again and stands. "Are you all right in there? Are you on the floor or somethin? You sound… really low! Boss! Boss?"

"…mmm… I'm going … oh god, I'm going to… no, no I promised them I'd... I can't die here! Please hurry…" the comms screech out this new Doctor's voice into snippets of speech, the sound of him always narrowing, thinning, being herded toward an outcome like cattle shoving through a chute. But all three of them know that if they don't find him soon, the cows will have one up on their friend, and two races will die.

"I know it's a cliché, but this doesn't sound good." Jack murmurs, checking the touch screens that flash from every alcove as they run by. "The TARDIS is monitoring his vitals… she seems to be leading us to his general area- which means she still can't find him." He pushes a button on his wrist strap, connecting the node that appears to the node that suddenly appeared near him on the wall.

"From all these scans, it looks like the eggs really are sucking him dry," Martha calls from somewhere ahead. "You were right about the saline, from what I can see. The body charts are showing pictures of his uterine structures! He's got to lay a lot more of those eggs before he's done…" She points to the picture on the screen, where the shape of a man is flashing, and near where the legs join the torso, an organ resembling a double caduceus with hanging glands on either side and a slight bulb at the bottom is blinking on and off on a black background.

"Oh god, Boss…" Mickey mumbles as they all crowd around the twinkling gaslight image of the Doctor's womb.

As they watch, the middle space between the staves of the double caduceus begins to bulge to either side, like a time-lapse video of a fruit growing on a tree.

"…looks like a clockwork orange…" one of them says, and the comms sputter again with the Time Lord's voice, so weak now, and tinny, as though it's coming from the basement plumbing. At least they're getting closer...

Behind them, the hallway shifts silently and spins a new direction, a little like the hydraulics at a carnival... The wall screen beeps. A blue light covered in red orange sludge situated in the middle blinks its diamond soul. Larger lights begin blasting up and down the side ways on either end of the forward-backward walk.

Another set of lights comes on, closer to the screen they're all standing at.

The hallway stops shifting, and as it clinks against the floor there and melts into the ground, becoming solid again, a single floor light blinks its eye upward from the glass and shines on the silhouette of something man-sized, partially hidden from view by a half-open door that reads:

Environment Room, 7b; Swamp and Wetlands.

"Why's the door half-open?" Mickey asks, taking a step toward the door. His foot catches on something bony and naked, and he goes down…


	3. ch 02

Chapter Two

Before Mickey has got himself completely free, Jack falls down beside the Time Lord's gore-streaked face. His hands grab the long baby-cheeks, searching for broken bones there, his long fingers smushing against streams of dried blood clots that coat the man in uneven waves like the crusty rise in the innards of a dirty fountain drink dispenser. The Doctor's been lying in his own birth fluid for hours…

"I'm… so… tired…" the alien whimpers, his entire body seeming to originate from his shaking lower lip and chin. "So tired, so tired, so tired I can't… I can't… Jaaack…I wish River was he-he-here, t-too! Waaaaah-ahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Ow, ow ow ow owwww…"

The exhaustion is so great he can't even hold his mouth closed; his jaw just falls back down again, followed by a line of thin silvery drool.

Ancient green jewel eyes try and fail to float toward what Martha is doing to his arm with that sharp, sharp needle topped by a little plastic orange thingy at the back. Is that a tube? Are they going to intubate him? The Doctor shivers in Jack's arms, feeling a sudden tremor take him.

"…m' in sh-shock, I think." he manages, lolling his drooping vision in Martha's general direction again. "Is that…. uhng. Is that saline?"

"Yeah, it is, Doctor." says Martha around another bag of viscous clear fluid marked 09% Sodium Chloride; her teeth are imprinting on the plastic, and he can see the bag pulling between her lips. "There's a slot in the wall; it keeps spitting them out. The TARDIS must be worried for you just a bit, eh?"

"Oh she's… always worried. I worry her to death. Blimey, I… do feel better. Thank…thank you for figuring it out." the Doctor gives a weak grunt, then reaches down to gently slide another slightly sticky egg from between his legs.

His fingers flatten over his stomach afterward, and stay there, placidly awaiting the five minute interval between birthings.

Martha takes his arm, bends his wrist away and inserts an orange-capped iv into what she was hoping was his median cubital, the major vein near the elbow most commonly tapped in humans. At the soggy, limping –much better thanks- nod of his sweat-damp rabbit hair, she knows it was an accurate assumption.

Soon after, the Doctor begins to wilt like old flowers, his fluttering eyelids closing slowly on metal shutter eyes that might have caught the sun spectacularly, if there'd been a sun in the Swamp Room. It is relief, married to exhaustion, which causes him to fall asleep, too, with most of his body propped against Jack's chest. The Time Agent, in the meantime, strokes the Time Lord's soaked hair and murmurs soothing little nothings.

"That's it my beauty, just go back to sleep- Uncle Jack will take good care of you and your babies, don't you worry."

Noting Martha and Mickeys' hooded looks, Jack rocks the Doctor gently back and forth in his arms and hums through a mouthful of hare-colored locks. His chin is lost in the straggly mess of brown, and he can smell feathers and sunshine there, now that the Time Lord is asleep and glistening with dried crystals of precious sweat-salt.

"The poor thing." she says, brushing a strand from the alien's face as Mickey comes over and sits beside them. "It's odd enough seeing him in a new body, but like this? Weak and sickly, like a drowned rat…it's so not him, regardless of the regeneration. He needs cleaned up, undressed and in bed. He's laying every five minutes or so, so someone needs to keep time. Jack, Mickey?" She looks at both men in turn, asking only part of the question with her licorice pool eyes. "Can we get a bed of some kind through that door? If this type of climate is what he prefers right now I wouldn't move him. But I won't feel safe about moving him until his hearts rate slows a bit; his right side's running quite fast." She looks up at her husband, then at Jack, her mouth in a small line, tight and hopeful. "We need to make him comfortable, as much as we can. And we need more saline. Jack, find out if the TARDIS can keep replicating these indefinitely. At the rate he's downing these, he'll only last a few more hours."

"I know, Nightingale. I know. And there's something else wrong with this picture, kids…" says Jack as he gingerly lifts one of the soft-shelled, watercolor-grey eggs the Doctor has just laid and examines it, turning the macro-ovum over once or twice in his hand before he sets it back down amongst the others on the floor and turns around mid crouch to look outside into the hall. "Mickey, why don't you go and check the hallway for us. In his condition, we'd be crazy to leave him alone, but there's also the issue of that locked Environment Room across the way. Why did he go to the trouble to drag himself in here when the Ocean Room was what he needed?"

Mickey's nervous laughter echoes through the Swamp Room as he answers. "I know what you're gettin' at, Cheesecake- the Ocean Room is the only one that's double dead-locked. And you want to know if he locked it and why, am I right? I'll try to pull up the cams."

As Mickey disappears out the door, the Doctor whimpers and shifts in his sleep on Jack's lap.


	4. ch 03

Chapter Three

I lean the small, vaguely trilobite-shaped case with a curling label marked EUBULIDES' egkekalummenos against the wall as I search for what goes in it. I never have anything to put away anyway, don't know why I keep it around. Stupid thing - it's gone off somewhere again.

I've been here for a while now, in the TARDIS, searching for it. I need it, you see. Need it for dinner. All these eggs need some relish, after all… and it wouldn't do for the main course to be incomplete. But there is time to find the pepper; the eggs of the Ruler and its thousand consorts have not yet been laid. I would smell them.

I've been careful not to make scuffing noises on the floor; the humans might hear me. And we can't have that.

My feet are so very large, after all. They're topped with back-tipping toe claws similar to those of an old Earth raptor, if my history is correct.

I listen at the door, my long thin hands wrapped about the handle to my locked hideaway in the… what is it called? Ocean Room. Yes. Ocean Room. It must have been mislabeled, because the only things in here are a bunch of chairs for bipeds, covered by dusty old sheets, the scratchy old tags of which read:

100 Percent Balatruvian Cotton. 500 thread count.

Outside my safe little cabinet of a room, footsteps fall. Soon, through the screen of the small box-like device I am working in my smooth-scaled foreclaws, I can just glimpse a dark skinned human with an earpiece slipping out of the Swamp Room door, scurrying for the darkest part of the hallway some two and a quarter metres away to my right.

Humans, I think to myself as I pad forward on thick-soled narrow lizard feet and exit the storage, make very good lunch dates, with their two legs and their crunchy bones. I will follow the dark one into the dark, hiding in the plap plap clack of his hard foot coverings.

Plap plap clack.

Plap plap clack.

Plap plap clack.

Plap plap...


	5. ch 04

Chapter Four

"It's been a day now, Mickey's gone. This can't be good." Jack says, scratching his head as he lifts the Doctor's face to a drinking bulb and wets the Time Lord's dry, cracking lips with the clear salty fluid inside. "I bet he tripped over a coupling and is sprawled somewhere with a nosebleed."

"That's my husband you're dismissing, Jack!" Martha cuts him off with a punch to his bicep. "My Mickey can take care of himself, mostly… but I'm not happy about him being gone this long- he's usually not this bad at gettin' back on the comms. Do you think we should worry? 'cause frankly I'm not willing to sit here much longer unless one of us goes out and finds him safe and sound and passed out on the floor because he hit himself in the head on an overhang."

Her hands pull gently on a round object attempting to flush out with the latest rush of birth fluid from between the Time Lord's legs. Another glistening egg, but larger than the last set and deep crimson in colour, like an uncut ruby.

"Hey, Jack, this one's red, and bigger- do you see how his lower abdomen is crunching up, straining around it? His body doesn't want to push it out. The tip is slightly more pointed as well. Must be the start of a new caste level! With the four days we calculated him startin' this, then, judging by the data I gathered from the TARDIS banks… this looks like human bees but works like human lizards. I'm thinking, with the advanced rate of growth, we've got… three more days of this, with him? He can't do this much longer, even with the TARDIS providing the saline, it's just not enough."

Jack bends his hand back, replacing the Doctor's water-drenched head on the remains of his greatcoat.

"We've got to get him through this, Martha. To do that, I've got to find Mickey and get that door open. You have your weapon?"

Martha turns to the holster at her side, her fingers running over the slim little black tranquilliser gun." It's not really a weapon, Jack. But I have more than just this, hidden away. Oh, wait a minute Jack, our boy's done it again." Her hand comes away from the Doctor's legs, a big ruby egg sitting perched in her splayed palm. "Good job, Doctor, you're doing great! Just keep… what is…"

A streak of silver scurries across the floor.

With a shriek, it lifts up and hurtles toward Martha's face.

On his arse in the comm room, Mickey sits and stares at the big alien lizard keeping him hostage.

"You a Silurian? Never seen a Silurian looks like you before!"

The big tail flicks up, smacks him across the face. Another smack ensues; he falls.

"You'll speak when spoken to, idiot, and not before. Because I have something to say." The smooth-skinned lizard murmurs from a long snout hung between two lazy, half-shut milky eyes. "Is he awake? I need to speak with him."

"Ha! Yeah right! You wanna eat those eggs, is what you want!" Mickey chides, shaking his head and grinning as the lizard glares at him with a sudden mouthful of long fangs growing straight and long and moving in a shrinking triangle right for his…

The teeth smush close to his jaw; he can feel their tips digging into the flesh of his cheek like those old toys where you can push your face into the pins.

Its cool breath skirts his nostrils, and he sniffs at it eagerly. "Go on then! What you waitin' for? Eat me! You ain't getting' in the room with the Doctor and my wife. Jack'll eat you for breakfast, lunch and dinner!"

But the mouth just… leans in, like a pillow, nuzzling against his cheek. A little water falls out the alien's eye; it blinks triple eyelids, and three cloudy filters rise and fall across the eye's orb-like surface, each one set at a different angle then the last. The long black tongue plops out, sharp, thin as a needle and… shakes against the roof of the gaping maw. Words form, somehow… perhaps some kind of device in the snout bone?

"I appreciate your loyalty, Mickey," something warm and bookish says in Mickey's head, blending into the scenery like a fine dust in some gigantic library, the tone of voice similar to soft silt settling in the bed of a stream. "But I'm not in there with Jack and Martha and all those vulnerable eggs. I'm out here with you. Which means…" The tongue flicks along Mickey's cheekbone now, tapping along the bridge of his hyperventilating nose. "Guess what you left in there with your wife?"


	6. ch 05

Chapter Five

Flashback.

I look up groggily, scratch my face. A scale comes off, flicking down to somewhere below me in the dark, small room.

Wait, my foggy brain reminds me. Look at that shiny thing that just came off you.

I look down.

There is indeed a tiny piece of chitinous green scale gleaming like a flattened pearl on the round motel rug.

My fingers creep up over the rim of my line of sight. Soft, pale, squidgy. Square tips. Large. But mine.

I feel under the sheet pulled halfway over my naked body, checking for unscheduled organ donations, extra presents, uninvited timeshares.

Wet blood is cold on my fingers as I pull them back up into the dim lights. A soft, clear, crystalline blue-purple. Not mine. The Ystyfloran. I look over the side of the bed. One of her arms drapes limply near the edge of the rug. Dead. The bed must be soaked.

My hand goes lax, lumping itself into a loose ball across my side. My eyes narrow like two needles. I rest a moment, nerves surging through my skin now, searching for inevitably more… damning… evidence.

Mind floating free on a raft of leukocyte in my bloodstream, I ride the wave to Vegas down below, and there I find it. A swell, a bunch, an increasing cluster of tiny oocytes clinging hard to my internal reproductives like stubborn encrusting barnacles.

Great. I've been… but who would…oh god. Well, now. I think a moment, diagnosing and discarding potential suspects.

Then I remember the Ssvolkan lizard man who bumped into me in the station gift shop. Body-swapping bastard. I'd passed out then. Woke up here.

But, I also recall having a beautiful conversation with the Ystyfloran woman about the Ystyflor racial heritage and the decline of breeding capability among their young. They were a beautiful race, Ystyflor, what with their crystal skin and flowing water for veins. Their children grew as eggs, then larvae, then grew up into gorgeous anthropomorphized bees... whose larvae would sell for trillions of credits on the blacker food markets. Hadn't she said something about being the last one? The last… he never could refuse a hard luck case.

If the Ssvolkan tries to bodyswap me again, it will go easier this time. For the Ssvolkan. None of me left in here, all bundled up and packaged in that lizard brain while the snake walks around in my meat suit. Lovely. At least part of me had been there with the Ystyfloran… to think of that lizard bastard treating such a lovely creature like a slab of choice round…

The checklist writes itself then, as my womb begins to shudder and grow under my fingernails, and I scrabble up from the bed, fall back dizzy, and click my fingers for blue. Then I straighten up again, reach down and grab my trousers.

"She won't be pleased about this," I murmur, sighing as the TARDIS whirrs into being beside me.

"Hello, dear," I breathe, then I trip on my half-pulled trousers and fall through her comforting doors, in a rumpled pile of tweed, my bowtie hanging.

Then a large lizard man runs through my open door, leaps over my body and into the TARDIS, his hissing, sibilant laugh doubtless grating on my Time Ship's sensors.

"Why thank you, Doctor, for a most lucrative evening," the lizard says softly on his way down the hall, "I'll be taking the eggs after you're dead. After all, the owner paid me well enough for em- and I don't think she'll mind if I nip a few for myself. You won't be fussing over it, anyhow."


	7. ch 06

Chapter Six

With stolen lips, 'the Doctor' smiles open mouthed at Martha's back as she struggles with the silvery terror wiggling and squirming in her hands. Then it stops wiggling and squirming, and just… stares, right into her eyes.

"Ugh! What is this thing? Looks like… a cybermat!"

The Time Agent Jack Harkness stands near her now, bent over and looking at the strange silver metal creature writhing close to her face.

"Wait, Martha," Jack says, holding out an upraised palm toward her and shaking it, "I don't think it's attacking- look at its face. The eyes are blue. A very specific blue! Look closer!"

Martha leans back, away from the bugging out cybermat.

"Prussian blue… TARDIS blue…" Martha says, holding her breath.

"Agreed. How many blinks is it, Martha?"

Martha looks.

"One, then a long pause, then another one. Then short long short long short long. Two short blinks, a long, then three short. Then two long, one short long long long, one short, then short long short long short long again."

"I thought so. Put it down."

Martha sets the blinking cybermat down next to the sleeping Doctor.

"All right, but… what was the message, Jack?"

Jack walks around the Doctor and stands in front of Martha, cocking his head toward the Doctor as he mouths, "SOS; it's me."

Then he taps the Doctor's brown hair with his foot, then grabs Martha's hand.

"Come with me, Martha, step away from there."

The Doctor moans and turns over, half-asleep as he cries out, "Martha, it hurts!"

Martha looks down at him, then turns to Jack, shakes her head, and tries to pull free. But Jack holds her wrist more firmly, dragging her away from the whimpering Time Lord.

"Martha, please!" the Time Lord cries again, curling up on himself as his body retracts and constricts around the latest egg accosting his innards, his hands clenching, shoes scrabbling on the floor making scratches.

Jack smiles that smile he has, the one where most people get nervous and carry on walking. And he keeps on smiling, looking down at the Doctor with a widening grin as his free hand caresses his Webley.

"So, hot stuff…" the Time Agent murmurs, taking a step in front of Martha, just one step, then another, then another, careful to keep himself between the doctor… and the Doctor, "going my way?"


	8. ch 07

Chapter Seven

In the Ssvolkan's body, I move away from the blast door covering the main area, then signal Mickey with an extended claw.

"Now, Mickey," I think they've cottoned on- move away from my personal space. I'm gonna do something stupid!"

Mickey moves a few spaces back and to the right in the hallway, nodding his head back and forth like a broken bobble head toy, his jaw grinding slow in his skull.

"He's got my wife in there, Boss, let's do this."

"Good man, Mickety Smith- now let's get this door off then."

I pull back the Ssvolkan's long, thick thighs, readying for a jump kick, then leap and drive the muscles forward, ramming the door.

"Waah! What was that?" the Doctor whimpers, clutching his belly, his body half out with the new egg.

"This one's rather large… must be a queen."

"Oh my god, that 'is' huge," Martha says, crossing her arms and eyeing the Doctor, "could be worse; could be a bolus!"

"We can't hear anything, darling, must be your imagination," Jack adds sweetly, taking a deep breath and draping an arm around Martha's shoulders.

The Time Agent and the former companion look at each other, grinning with their eyes at the pounding getting louder behind them.

"Yeah, I uh, don't hear anything either, Doctor, maybe you should check your ears."

"Are you insane, woman? How many times have I been there for you? You're both of you just… standing there staring as I writhe in this horrible pain! Ohgod ohgod! To hell with you! I'm leaving!"

The metal door locking down the room flies off its slides, sailing over the Doctor's downturned, sweat-slicked brown haired head.

A soft, slithering remonstration slips from the lizard thing standing in the hole.

"If you touch a hair on their headsss I will dessstroy your body, and psssychically tether your mind to the nearessst sssun. How'sss that for an entranccce?"

The Doctor looks up from the cup of his hands and smiles, teeth gleaming as he claps limp long fingers together.

"Bravo, Doctor, but now I'm afraid it's time to make my exit."

Then he brings his hand smashing down onto the cybermat, and a sickening crunch is heard in a shower of sparks.


	9. ch 08

Chapter Eight

"Bitey Eubulidesss!" I cry, biting my new lizard lips, "you killed Bitey!"

"Easy Doctor, don't!" Jack calls out, reaching toward the gesticulating Ssvolkan.

Then the Ssvolkan in my body, still on the floor but sitting now with one leg under him, brings his fist up again, grinning wider as he raises his hand high above his stomach, preparing to…

"Don't. You. Dare," I hiss, leaping across the room in three long bounds of lithe lizard feet, "sssmasssh that egg!"

I turn to Jack, thin eyes watering in terror as a wet red egg, bigger than the others, peeks from the Doctor's body, 'my' body, then slides back in again as if waiting for something, "it'sss the queen! Their raccce will be lossst, all thossse beautiful livesss!"

Jack swivels, and begins to run toward the Time Lord sprawled on the floor.

But my borrowed Ssvolkan body is quicker, and I scream out to Jack as he tackles my purloined real one, "Chain me up! This one," pointing to myself with a big claw, "River's containment cuffs, top drawer of my bedroom chest!"

Jack changes direction mid sprint, weaves and careens for the hole in the door, his feet slipping slightly as he considers the more awkward implications of my request.

Martha picks up the cybermat and skids to one side, giving it a quick look over then throwing me a grin as I in my Ssvolkan lizard suit slam my open claws onto the Doctor's forehead, my real forehead, initiating the reversal of the swap.

"Hurry up, Jaaaack, I've turned my real body's pain receptors back on but I can't hold him forever!" I gasp from the Ssvolkan's mouth, the words echoing from my own lips too as my real body sinks low with another contraction, "they're coming more quickly, the little dears, and the Ssvolkan's… not making it easy- he's fighting me on the switch. Martha," I add, not quite pleading, a thin smile spreading through my tone, "till Jack gets ba… ooo pain… gets back, start counting."


	10. ch 09 end

Chapter Nine

"So, did you get anything out of him?" I say, rolling my favorite old wheelchair up so I can lean in the door of the medical bay and gaze at Jack staring at the sedated and sleeping Ssvolkan.

The Time Agent turns his head, smiles, then turns back to the lizard.

"You're still a bit sweat-damp, sweetheart," he murmurs, suddenly breathless with anger at the Ssvolkan, "you were violated, forced to give birth. Repeatedly. Sure you don't want Uncle Jack to give you a massage? Loosen up your shoulders, make you some cocoa? Tell you a story until you're safely asleep in my lap?"

My smile is wan, but it happens.

"Not today, Jack. I just… I'm just happy the eggs are all right. The Queen. All of them. Martha's busy checking them over for anomalies with the TARDIS- Mickey found the real Ocean Room, I gather? I don't remember much after the queen egg. Great to be back in my real body, low-hanging fruitful branches, lifetime achievement bruises and all, thank you very much! And as for our little friend here…"

I wheel myself past Jack to the lizard's bedside, then look down, dropping all pretense of sociability.

"I have an idea about him. Did you get a name?"

Jack smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes.

"Suoli."

I smile, too, but my hands loosen suspiciously on the wheel housings of my chair, deftly avoiding a grey lump of old gum and a strange bit of striped knit fabric stuck in a spoke.

"Suoli, huh? Sounds like… hrm. Well… I know a guy. Let me call him…"

Jack gets up and considers my tired appearance, all ruffled hair and peaked skin and a new sheen of thick sweat.

He looks to me for confirmation. I give him a nod, then he gets down on one knee and takes me by the cheeks, gripping the bones firmly, letting his fingers heat my clammy skin and cook the cold sweat still running off me from the previous days' exertions.

"Not today, beautiful. Please, can't you just… for one minute? Just stop? Sleep? Please?"

I grin like a plastic doll as I shove a shaking hand through my sweat damp hair and mutter, a little too sweetly, "Okay, sure. Lead the way. But promise me, Jack… promise me that after tonight you and Martha will be gone."

I feel Jack stiffen through the metal of the wheelchair, but say nothing.

"Sure thing, Doc…" Jack swallows, his hands falling from the wheelchair handles as he walks away.

I watch my friend disappear into the TARDIS, then wipe my eyes free of hot tears and wheel down the hallway to my room.

Three minutes later, I switch on the light near my bed. With a sigh I reach under my pillow and pull out Jack's phone.

"Like babies and candy," I murmur, dialing a number.

"Hello?" I say, waiting patiently for the other end of the line to produce something resembling a reply.

"I'm looking for the owner of this restaurant."

A soft, gibbering murmur answers back.

"…sir, Lady Ko Batta-Tan is waiting on a very important call. Please call again later, mister… what did you say your name was?"

I sigh into the phone, letting the boredom drip off my tongue as my closed fist drips blood from the force of my grip, "Hang the bureaucracy, sweetheart. Your mistress knows who I am. She sent her pet Ssvolkan to steal my body and countless others' for illegal slavery and shipping concerns. Tell her I'm the Doctor. Tell her I'm a Time Lord. And tell her… tell her if she wants her shipment of Ystyflor eggs, she'll meet me in person. Tonight."

END

To be continued in

That's Democracy For You


End file.
